A Quota By Any Other Name

February 20, 1986|The Morning Call

There's an old saying that if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and looks like a duck. . . chances are, it's a duck. The same reasoning might be applied to what South Whitehall Township Police Chief Donald K. MacConnell calls"police performance standards" or ". . . contacts per month." The name he applies to that aspect of police business is not "quota," but this controversial policy quacks and waddles suspiciously like a quota.

Police quota systems act in very much the same manner as does the controversial Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-slashing law. As G-R-H removes from the trembling fingers of Congress the right to cut spending directly, so do quota systems reduce substantially the discretion normally available to the patrolling police officer. Under the commonly accepted provisions of a quota system, the officer knows he must initiate a prescribed number of "contacts" with the civilian populace, or face the wrath of the top brass in his department. As the month dwindles down to a precious few days and the officer's numbers may not be up to par, his judgment may well become far more severe than it may have been in the first week of the month. Police officers in South Whitehall, claiming that MacConnell's program is a thinly disguised quota system, filed suit last March in Lehigh County Court seeking the abolition of the practice, which Chief MacConnell denies is, in fact, a quota system.

Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation to have adopted legislation banning quota systems. The portion of the law defining what is proscribed behavior is quite clear. It states: "No political subdivision or agency of the commonwealth shall have the power or authority to order, mandate, require or in any other manner, directly or indirectly, suggest to any police officer, State Police Officer. . . (names of other law enforcement agents) . . . (to) issue a certain number of traffic citations, tickets or any other type of citation on any daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis." It appears that by telling his officers to make a minimum of 25 "contacts" per month, Chief MacConnell has established a quota system.

What is less clear in the law is what happens in the township should the court decree that, yes, this is a quota system. Section 2 of the 1981 law declares: "Any tickets or citations issued in violation of this act shall be unenforceable, null and void." This raises the possibility that, should the court decide in favor of the police officers, many hundreds of aggrieved motorists ticketed in South Whitehall during the "quota" years will rise up and demand redress. Such redress could come about as civil litigation in the form of individual lawsuits, a class-action suit and, according to one legal opinion, federal action charging violation of a motorist's civil rights.